Sima Guang

• Born: 1019
• Died: 1086

Sima Guang was a Chinese scholar-official and historian. He is credited with authoring The Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government, a history of China up to 959, which is regarded as the first history of China to incorporate differing accounts or interpretations of events rather than presenting a single official narrative.

As a political official and advisor, Sima Guang advocated incremental reforms, and policies based on those of the preceding Tang Dynasty and of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms Period. He found himself the head of a powerful faction at Court, opposed by a classicist faction which advocated more radical reforms, and a fuller return to the ways of the classical Sage Kings of old.

References

• Valerie Hansen, The Open Empire, New York: W.W. Norton & Co. (2000), 269.